Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale. |
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. |
The fairies break their dances / And leave the printed lawn. |
The goal stands up, the keeper / Stands up to keep the goal. |
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild; / He has devoured the infant child. / The infant child is not aware / He has been eaten by the bear. |
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in. |
The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can; not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me. |
The rainy Pleiads wester, / Orion plunges prone, / The stroke of midnight ceases, / And I lie down alone. |
The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale. |
The young man feels his pockets / And wonders what's to pay. |
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, / The lads that will die in their glory and never be old. |
Think no more; 'tis only thinking / Lays lads underground. |
Tomorrow, more's the pity, / Away we both must hie, To air the ditty / and to earth I. |
We for a certainty are not the first have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed whatever brute and blackguard made the world. |
When I was one-and-twenty / I heard a wise man say, / `Give crowns and pounds and guineas / But not your heart away.' |